


Kate.

by skinnylittlered



Category: British Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, hiddlestoners
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:46:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinnylittlered/pseuds/skinnylittlered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very much near-death Tom reminisces on love and life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kate.

_"Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori!"_

He’s reached the age at which he’s more often referred to as Papa, rather than his own name, the age at which he spends more time stationing, for the aches of a man whose body has been the principal means of putting bread not only on his table but on the unfortunate ones’ also are great – greater than his needs, at least – and he’s grown irreversibly, overwhelmingly,  _just too damn_  tired to cope with it anymore. The age at which sleep comes all too seldom and when it does it’s not enough, never enough; he thinks it to be nature’s way of preparing one for when he’ll no longer wake up. He thinks it a shitty way of giving one the heads up – as if the prospect of dying isn’t bad enough as it is already. He’s ready to die, though. He’s been ready to die since the day his eyes could no longer distinguish the words of the Bard on paper, and then the day he could no longer summon them from memory. Nowadays, he barely remembers whatever he’s had for dinner two days ago (it’s not like the menu’s so varied anyways, his stomach seems to have gone all ‘Means Girls’ on his ass for so long a while that he forgot the taste of anything that’s not a shade of green), Shakespeare is so out of the question he even forgot what the question was in the first place.

All in all, his wit no longer quick, appearance so distorted he can find good in not seeing well anymore, and all his talents washed up by the sands of time and the gushing English rain, he doesn’t find death to be such an imposing idea. Everybody ought to go at some point and, although the thought of it sounds clandestine at best, the world ought to keep spinning even when he ceases to exist. The world without Tom Hiddleston. A dull pain simmers under his skull as he tries to picture it: the streets that bear his footsteps and the grass upon he’d lay on afternoons that he decided to be made into lazy ones just because there were too many books to be read for him to be working on his Nordic accent. His voice coach could shove it up his ass. RADA could shove it up its ass. Today, his self-awarded day off, he’d read a couple of books just because, while having his curls deep-conditioned as they seemed to have gotten slightly out of shape and he couldn’t look any bit less than the ingenuous part genetically assigned to him, the part that’s granted him so many free passes in the past and, he’s sure of it, will grant him so many more in the years to come. Those places, they’re his as he’s theirs and it makes him cringe, the thought of generic mindless brats profaning them with their shameless, too revealing displays of affection and their stupid humours, forgetting that, before giving his name significance of any kind, he, too, was a generic mindless brat, huffing and snorting and snogging girls and laughing too loud and, generally, feeling too ardently, too intensely, too much for too long. It is to be forgiven, his intolerance, for his memory, although bad, his intentions remain good.

He only wants to keep her image intact. The image of the girl who nuzzled the crook of his neck, as, wrapped in a itchy quilt, he told her about the Iliad and Odyssey of which she’d never catch half of as his voice would always lull her to sleep so he’d have to carry her back to her room, strip her to her underwear and tuck her in, then moon over her just long enough for her to gently stir awake and ask him to spend the night, fluttering eyelids drooping and slurred voice creaking sleepily. He’d shed his own clothes and press his body to hers tightly, warming to her naked skin, locking her in his arms in a most platonic embrace. He’d only need that, the closure, for her he could have over and over, faster, deeper, closer, always closer, closer with each stroke, with each convulsion, with each pant, moaning her gratifications into his ear in exchange for his, over and over, faster, deeper, closer, always closer, until no room was left, until it all became too much in too little space, in too little time and they fell next to each other, spent and gloriously glistening under yellow, incandescent light.

One night was not like the others before, and after that none of them were ever the same. The night she straddled him, cupping his face, an eerily stoical dejection shading them, like he was a long-lost lover, newly found by chance. She stoked the messy curls on his head, traced every line on his face with the tips of her fingers, softly sighing. Although disturbing, at the time Tom thought it no more of it than one of her many peculiar yet endearing whims. She, then, told him about Katherine, _preposterously English and proper_ , as she unforgivably put it – for she found not one sin more abject than doltish propriety – and about the life he’ll have with her, the white picket fence and Lacoste wearing sons he’ll have by her. He chuckled with mirth and pushed her hair behind her ear, then pulled her down for a kiss that was not really a kiss as much as a distraction.

He wasn’t there to kiss it better when she cooed to herself that it was okay, that the pain will only last for a few short minutes, that she only had those few short minutes to take the world in for one last time before it all turned to black for good, so she did, and it was more beautiful and she loved it more than she ever had, in those last few short minutes as she was going away, for once in her life slowly, steadily, detached.

He pulled a customary Kübler-Ross for a few weeks, mourned her for a couple of years, looked for her into every woman he fucked for another, drank all the way through the process, then met a Katherine called Elisabeth, prettier then she’d ever been, who knew Homer and Plato and Socrates and made a mean cup of tea and scones as tender as his mother’s. A woman whom he loved until her death, most dearly, incessantly, wholly. A woman nothing like her, whose memory he isn’t bound to keep, for her deeds wear her name, and words of her shan’t cease until humankind becomes irrelevant.

Because that’s what happened with  _her_.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve actually kept this little piece in my fiction directory for a loooooo…oong time, and I’m still a bit unsure about it… You be the judges, I trust your fic-criticising expertise. Also, there are not that many (more than I expected, though) of you that read my works, but to those (treasured) few, thank you, thank you, thank you for sticking with me and I’m terribly sorry for the snail-slow rate things are going at, but senior year is kicking me in the rear big time, and it’s probably going to be like that until late June. Thanks again, I’m profusely appreciative of it!
> 
> Originally posted on skinnylittleredwrites.tumblr.com


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